


It's Happened Before

by thebisexualbanshee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Castiel-centric, DeanCas - Freeform, Demon Dean, Demon Dean Winchester, Destiel - Freeform, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Human Castiel, M/M, Supernatural - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-12 23:32:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10501737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebisexualbanshee/pseuds/thebisexualbanshee
Summary: The first time, they’ve just arrived in Purgatory. There’s a small gust of wind, the sound of feathers, and when Dean turns around, Castiel is gone. Dean doesn’t know why he’s disappeared, and he doesn’t feel the barely-there brush of an angel’s kiss on his cheek, disguised by the puff of breeze.But Cas doesn’t really count that as the first time. The real first time happens sometime after.He wants it to happen when he’s back from Purgatory, when he’s showered and has conjured up new clothes, and he steps into the Winchesters’ motel room. “Better?” he said.There are still some facets of human behavior that confuse him, but Dean’s reaction isn’t one of them. His face changes and he squirms like he wants to hide—and it’s all Cas can do to not whisk across the room and sweep Dean into his arms.But he doesn’t. Not yet.





	

It’s happened before, even though only one of them remembers.

The first time, they’ve just arrived in Purgatory. There’s a small gust of wind, the sound of feathers, and when Dean turns around, Castiel is gone. Dean doesn’t know why he’s disappeared, and he doesn’t feel the barely-there brush of an angel’s kiss on his cheek, disguised by the puff of breeze. 

But Cas doesn’t really count that as the first time. The real first time happens sometime after. 

He wants it to happen when he’s back from Purgatory, when he’s showered and has conjured up new clothes, and he steps into the Winchesters’ motel room. “Better?” he said. 

There are still some facets of human behavior that confuse him, but Dean’s reaction isn’t one of them. His face changes and he squirms like he wants to hide—and it’s all Cas can do to not whisk across the room and sweep Dean into his arms. 

But he doesn’t. Not yet. 

It finally happens for the first time—the real first time—in the least romantic way Cas could imagine. Not that he’s great at provoking scenes of idyllic romance anyway, but even he knew this wasn’t the way these things were supposed to go. 

They were in a crypt, dark and cobwebbed. Dean, on his knees before him. Dean, gripping the sleeve of his trench coat. Dean, beaten bloody by his own hands, all for a tablet that was said could lock up heaven. He was about to deliver the final blow, and he would hate himself for it forever, but he couldn’t stop. Not until Dean spoke. 

“We need you,” Dean said. 

Not good enough. His fist, hovering in the air, tightened around a blade. 

“I need you.” 

The mind is a powerful thing. Especially for an angel. And someone had fingers deep in Castiel’s cerebellum, rearranging the folds of his memory, rewiring the parts they didn’t like. What they forgot, though, is that Cas had been in a human body for a long time, and even though much of it was still foreign, still strange, much of it wasn’t. The mind is a powerful thing, but so is the heart—and too much heart was, as many had said, always Castiel’s problem. Angels weren’t meant to feel the things he felt; angels weren’t meant to love—especially not a soldier, and this time, when Dean spoke, that human muscle in Castiel’s chest overrode the mechanic in his mind. 

He let his fist go slack. Let the blade clatter to the cold stone floor. Everything in him went suddenly raw; the unwelcome fingers in his mind ceased their tinkering. It was only him, and Dean, and horror for the things he’d done. He wanted to reach out for the hunter, and this time, he didn’t stop himself. He could’ve healed Dean with two fingers to the forehead, but that didn’t feel right; he wanted to feel him, feel the jawline piece itself back together beneath his touch, feel Dean’s cheek pressed to his palm. So he did. 

Cas healed Dean and dropped to his knees to level with the hunter. He pulled Dean’s face to his, crashing their foreheads together first, then their mouths, rough and desperate and sorry. But Dean didn’t kiss him back. He didn’t give him time. It was over and he was standing in an instant, and the hand still cradling Dean’s face sucked away the memory. Dean blinked up at him. 

“What broke the connection?” 

***

Dean doesn’t remember the second time either. Or if he does, he’s never mentioned it.

It happens when Castiel is human, and that makes everything more painful. He’s working at a Gas-N-Sip. He’s trying to move on, so he slept with a redheaded reaper. He’s trying to move on, so when Dean comes to visit, he asks for a ride to the date he thinks he’s going on. He needs to show Dean he can do what normal humans do. He needs Dean to see him surviving. On some small level, though, he needs Dean to be jealous. 

He’s human now, but he still notices the way Dean looks him over, the way his eyes linger a little too long when Cas is unbuttoning his shirt. And Cas wants him to notice—but he doesn’t want Dean to know he wants him to notice—and the whole thing feels very mortal and messy. 

When it isn’t a date—when it’s babysitting, and even that goes wrong, and he has to admit his failure, he doesn’t bother trying to hide his shame. Dean can sense it. Says Cas must be hungry—takes him to a bar instead. But Cas has to work in the morning. Cas has to be the responsible one. So Dean gets drunk while Cas finds them a hotel, wrangles away the keys to the Impala, drives them to their room. 

Dean collapses on the hotel bed, but he doesn’t seem to remember pulling Castiel down with him. He doesn’t remember—or at least never mentions—swapping gentle kisses with the angel until they’re both consumed by sleep. When Dean wakes up, Cas is already brushing his teeth. He drops the angel off at work, and Cas watches as the Impala roars away, Dean not knowing the angel’s heart is riding shotgun. 

***

Castiel remembers the third time it happens, but he tried to forget. 

Dean is strapped to a chair in the dungeon of the Men of Letters bunker, and his eyes are black. Sam’s been trying to cure him, like they almost cured Crowley, and they thought it was working—until Dean broke free and tried to kill Sam with a hammer. It took Cas and Sam both to get Dean back in the chair, and Sam was understandably shaken. Cas offered to watch over Dean for a while so Sam could cope. 

At first it was easy. After all, it wasn’t Dean. This was a demon, and unlike Sam, Cas didn’t have much hope that the cure would work. It got harder when Dean started talking, when he sounded more like himself, and Cas got close. Let his guard down. The angel leaned forward over the chair, hands on Dean’s shoulders, to get a closer look at not-quite-Dean’s eyes. To inspect the black that coated them like oil. Dean shoved his neck out and kissed him, hard. Castiel recoiled, and Dean laughed. 

“That’s what you want, isn’t it, angel? Pretty damn pathetic. You really think I could want you like that?” 

Castiel said nothing. He turned on a heel, coat billowing behind him, and closed the dungeon door on the sound of Dean’s echoing laughter. He called Sam to tell him it was time for another injection. 

***

It doesn’t happen again after that, but there are many times Castiel wants it to—and many times he thinks Dean secretly wants it to as well. 

When Cas is under Rowena’s spell, and Dean is so gentle with him in the bunker, takes such care to wrap him in blankets, lets his hands linger just a bit too long on the angel’s shoulders. 

When they’re in Lucifer’s cage, and Cas knows he has to let the Devil in to save the world from the Darkness, and he thinks he might never see Dean again. He looks over the Devil’s shoulder and makes a wish he hopes Dean feels. 

When Sam and Dean manage to subdue the evil archangel that’s wearing Castiel’s body, and he gets to come out for a moment, gets to hear the way Dean so desperately says his name. 

When he sees Dean after thinking he was dead. He almost said ‘fuck it’ and kissed him then, but Dean’s mother was there, and it was all too much. Still, Cas wishes he had. 

When Cas thinks he’s going to be killed by the Devil at a concert. 

The whole time Sam and Dean are missing, and when they find him, when Dean chooses to sit beside him in the backseat. 

When he kills the reaper. 

When Dean defies his wishes, follows him to town, slides in close beside him in the booth at a diner. 

When Cas thinks he’s going to die, and finally says, “I love you.” 

And somehow, he wants it to happen even more when Dean doesn’t say “I love you” back. But it doesn’t. And he’s afraid it won’t. And there’s another angel, one of his brothers, offering Cas a chance to go home. For years now, the word “home” has meant the bunker, with Dean and Sam. But now, crushed beneath the weight of what hasn’t happened, he starts to think it never really was. So, like a wounded dog, desperate for belonging, Castiel turns from his human home, tries to win back favor with Heaven. 

After all, it’s happened before. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I'm super salty about how Cas is being treated this season (12). Also--Because I'm lame I self-reference another fic I wrote in this piece, in the middle, when Cas is human. Here's the link if y'all want an expanded version of that moment! https://archiveofourown.org/works/8206291
> 
> ***Spoilers for basically everything past season 8***


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